Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to graphics processors and more specifically to decoding values for related threads.
Description of the Related Art
Graphics processing often involves executing the same instruction in parallel for different graphics elements (e.g., pixels or vertices). Further, the same group of graphics instructions is often executed multiple times (e.g., to perform a particular function for different graphics elements or for the same graphics elements at different times). Graphics processors (GPUs) are often included in mobile devices such as cellular phones, wearable devices, etc., where power consumption and processor area are important design concerns.
Special registers may be used to indicate the location of particular graphics data for related threads, such as pixel location, coordinate information, etc. The size of these registers may affect chip area and power, so their contents may be encoded to reduce the number of bits in each register. Encoding, however, introduces a need for additional circuitry and processing time to decode the register contents. Similar issues with arithmetic for related computing tasks may arise in a variety of contexts, in addition to operand location.